Why Doesn’t The WNBA Get Any Love?

But in reality we all know that girls/women do not run the world. And when it comes to sports women are nowhere near ruling that department.

Yes, we do have popular women athletes like Venus and Serena Williams, Maya Moore and a few others. But as a whole, women athletics doesn’t get as much recognition or respect as men athletics.

And when it comes to the WNBA the league is just irrelevant to many Americans.

The WNBA is celebrating its 15th year of existence. How many of y’all knew that?

The league was founded in 1996 right after the gold medal run by the 1996 USA Basketball Women’s National Team. The first game was played between the New York Liberty and the Los Angeles Sparks on June 21, 1997. The WNBA originated with eight teams in 1997.

Today, the league has 12 teams – nine of which shares the market with a NBA team.

Since its inaugural season, the league has had some well known names representing the WNBA brand who could play some serious basketball – such as Lisa Leslie (retired), Sheryl Swoops, Tina Thompson and Tangela Smith.

There is a new group of big name stars in the league today, like Maya Moore, Candace Parker, Tina Charles, Sylvia Fowles and former Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones. But even with all of those big names in the WNBA the league doesn’t grab the attention of many sports fans or people in general. Games are barely shown on television, which minimizes the highlights of games on SportsCenter.

In the game attendance column, overall league attendance was about 7,800 people per game in 2010, compared to the NBA’s 17,000-plus people per game. I know the NBA is more exciting than the WNBA because the men can do crazy acrobatic dunks, but the woman can do some spiffy moves with the ball as well.

By the way, Lisa Leslie and Candace Parker have dunked one or two times. But that’s neither here nor there.

The WNBA is really an irrelevant league in the sports world.

I live in Atlanta and when it comes to sports the Atlanta teams always fall short of making it to a championship game. We haven’t had a major sports championship since the Braves’ World Series win in 1995.

So when the Dream made it to the WNBA Finals last year one would think the entire city would be excited, right?

Wrong!

There was very little buzz in the city about the team. It was like people were discovering for the first time that Atlanta has a WNBA team 0_o.

I don’t know what the WNBA has to do to get the recognition and respect that the NBA has or even the recognition that women’s college basketball has.

You have more people following women’s college basketball than the WNBA, which is kind of confusing because the same players playing college ball eventually go on to play in the WNBA.

But I guess it doesn’t matter. No matter how talented the women are or even how good-looking some of them are, the WNBA will never get the same love as the NBA.

With the NFL lockout and the possibility of a NBA lockout maybe the WNBA will get some attention.

The reason women’s college basketball is more popular than the WNBA is because of school pride. Fans are pretty much just cheering for the name on the front of the jersey. At the professional level, fans want to see athletes do things that regular folks can’t do. In basketball, that means people want to see a game that’s played above the rim. The WNBA doesn’t bring the kind of game action most fans crave and pro sports teams don’t generally engender the same kind of loyalty that college teams do unless they create a long history of winning (Yankees, Lakers, Celtics, Steelers, Cowboys, etc.).